“No, child, no; not while I have a roof over my head, or a morsel to share with you!” exclaimed the Puritan, whose sympathies were now fully excited.  “Rise up and come with me, and fear not any harm.”

The boy wept afresh, and clung to the heap of earth, as if the cold heart beneath it were warmer to him than any in a living breast.  The traveller, however, continued to entreat him tenderly, and seeming to acquire some degree of confidence, he at length arose.  But his slender limbs tottered with weakness, his little head grew dizzy, and he leaned against the tree of death for support.

“My poor boy, are you so feeble?” said the Puritan.  “When did you taste food last?”

“I ate of bread and water with my father in the prison,” replied Ilbrahim, “but they brought him none neither yesterday nor to-day, saying that he had eaten enough to bear him to his journey’s end.  Trouble not thyself for my hunger, kind friend, for I have lacked food many times ere now.”

The traveller took the child in his arms and wrapped his cloak about him, while his heart stirred with shame and anger against the gratuitous cruelty of the instruments in this persecution.  In the awakened warmth of his feelings, he resolved that, at whatever risk, he would not forsake the poor little defenceless being whom Heaven had confided to his care.  With this determination, he left the accursed field, and resumed the homeward path from which the wailing of the boy had called him.  The light and motionless burden scarcely impeded his progress, and he soon beheld the fire rays from the windows of the cottage which he, a native of a distant clime, had built in the Western wilderness.  It was surrounded by a considerable extent of cultivated ground, and the dwelling was situated in the nook of a wood-covered hill, whither it seemed to have crept for protection.

“Look up, child,” said the Puritan to Ilbrahim, whose faint head had sunk upon his shoulder, “there is our home.”

At the word “home,” a thrill passed through the child’s frame, but he continued silent.  A few moments brought them to the cottage-door, at which the owner knocked; for at that early period, when savages were wandering everywhere among the settlers, bolt and bar were indispensable to the security of a dwelling.  The summons was answered by a bond-servant, a coarse-clad and dull-featured piece of humanity, who, after ascertaining that his master was the applicant, undid the door, and held a flaring pine-knot torch to light him in.  Further back in the passageway, the red blaze discovered a matronly woman, but no little crowd of children came bounding forth to greet their father’s return.  As the Puritan entered, he thrust aside his cloak, and displayed Ilbrahim’s face to the female.

“Dorothy, here is a little outcast whom Providence hath put into our hands,” observed he.  “Be kind to him, even as if he were of those dear ones who have departed from us.”